Tabacal

Due to a relative that works there Andrea and I got a deluxe guided tour of TABACAL, a large scale sugar cane plantation and refinery in the province of Salta in Northern Argentina, right on the border with Bolivia. The refinery was started in 1920 and was recently bought by a large USA based company with agricultural interests all over the world.

Sugar cane in February has not reached full height. It was not very sweet when I broke a cane and licked the juices. Harvest season is from May to November.

It was only possible to grasp the immensity of 25000 hectares of sugar cane from the air. The company pilot (as he text messaged on his phone) casually toured us around the enormous property that completely surrounds the company workers town of Yriogen and the city of Oran.

The sugar refinery and alcohol distillation plant on the left. On the right is the houses for the managers and upper positions of the company.

Since we visited out of harvest season, the refinery is not working and much of it is under repairs or maintenance. The sugar cane is now almost entirely harvested by mechanical combines. The company is now eliminating the once common practice of burning the dry leaves of the cane before harvest to reduce weight (this matters when you process a quarter million tons of cane). This photo shows where the cane is unloaded by the trucks. It is then splintered and goes by conveyor belts to the refinery.

These are the crushers (machine is missing more rollers under repairs). The sugar cane juice is extrated and piped away. The leftover fiber is burned to make electricity for the factory, town and city.

The juice is heated in these tanks to evaporate the water. Chemicals are added to stabilize, preserve and purify. A huge tangle of pipes, tanks and machines end up at the crystalization tanks where the sugar is dried with hot air.

Sugar is packed by hand and by machine into different size packages. Many jobs in the factoy remain hand labour because of the pressure the labour unions put to keep jobs.

Loading trucks means beginning to disassemble the `building` of sugar from the top.

Town of Tabacal has its own church and all the buildings are matching architecture from the 30`s.